A transitional season for the Washington University volleyball team ended in disappointment Saturday in Elmhurst, Ill., as the Bears fell in the second round of the NCAA Division III Tournament, their earliest elimination ever.

The No. 11 Bears defeated the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in the first round Friday (25-23, 25-23, 25-22) but were outmatched against No. 5 Elmhurst College in a 26-28, 18-25, 18-25 loss, the second straight year their season ended at the hands of the Bluejays. Wash. U. finished with the season with a 27-8 record—the .771 winning percentage the program’s worst since 1985.

In the first set against Elmhurst, the Bears led 23-20 when interim head coach Luke Young used the last of his 15 allotted substitutions. “We decided as a coaching staff to use our subs,” he said. “I felt that we had two rotations to get two points with those subs.”

Young’s gamble backfired, however. Though Wash. U. earned one point and had an opportunity to take a 1-0 lead, the Bluejays saved the set-point chance and won the tense set by taking advantage of the Bears’ players being in unfamiliar positions—the result of the team being out of substitutions.

When the two teams played in September, Wash. U. dropped the first set but played Elmhurst evenly the rest of the way, eventually losing an 18-16 fifth set. But on Saturday, the Bluejays seized the momentum with the first-set comeback and didn’t relent, dominating the remaining two sets en route to victory.

The Bears tallied 12 service errors, continuing a recent trend of struggling to keep their serves in play. The bigger problem came on defense, though, as the Red and Green couldn’t adjust to Elmhurst’s attack and the Bluejays’ hitting percentage increased in each set. In the third game, the victorious Bluejays hit .520 with 15 kills and two errors on only 25 swings.

Wash. U. garnered just one block in the match, only the second time this season it has recorded fewer than five.

“I don’t think our team stopped fighting at any point,” senior middle Emily Tulloch said. “Elmhurst is a good team, and they came out to win. They were better than us that game.”

It’s not often that Wash. U. isn’t the best team in a match, but that situation was an unfamiliarly common one for the Bears this year.

After losing Marilee Fisher, Drew Hargrave and Kelly Pang—who counted 11 All-America honors between them in their Wash. U. careers—to graduation following last season, as well as longtime head coach Rich Luenemann to a leave of absence, the Bears effectively used the 2013 campaign as a transitional one.

“I don’t think that we will look back here as the defining moment of our season,” Young said. “They will really celebrate how much thee team was able to grow in a short time.”

Four rotation players were freshmen, including Rexi Sheredy, the team’s leader in kills; Caroline Dupont, the co-conference freshman of the year; and Kalehua Katagiri, who manned the vital defensive position of libero. Overall, eight of the team’s top 10 players in sets played are underclassman, who will return next year having gained valuable experience—and hungry for a taste of the NCAA Tournament’s second weekend.

Never before their current stretch of postseason futility have the Bears gone even two consecutive years without advancing past the first weekend, let alone three straight as they have now, and the 2014 season will be time for some of those underclassman to turn playing experience into tournament victories.

With additional reporting by Tyler Friedman.